Ultraflora

The sculptures in the Ultraflora series (2025) appear as intricate, metallic structures that combine echoes of plant tissue, root systems, and mechanical processes. 

Volumetric scans of so-called pioneer plants — such as the Tree Aeonium, known for its ability to survive in extreme climates – are mapped onto a virtual spatial grid, reshaped, and then re-materialized with the help of a robotic arm, layering molten metal filament, allowing it to grow in successive strata into its final form. These sculptures embody a transition zone between the organic and the technological.

The resulting “Grenzgänger” or border-crossers belong to Troika’s speculative Field Guide to Virtual Botany. These are species that exist in liminal spaces, defy traditional classifications, and actively change their environment. They grow where opposites meet, at the edges of land and sea, between life and death, between reality and fiction. 

As ecological wanderers, symbolic threshold beings, and metaphorical markers, these species take on a new form. What was once vegetative now emerges as a techno-organic relic – prototypes of post-biological growth. Each sculpture stands on a roughly cut pedestal of elm wood, its annual rings, saw marks, and remnants of bark echoing the lines and structures of the sculptures above, grounding the work in the symbolism of the elm long believed to bridge realms and connect worlds.